


Human Nature

by imkerfuffled



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Human, Canon Compliant, Canon-typical alcohol abuse, Human AU, M/M, Nonbinary Beelzebub, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-05-20 12:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19376854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imkerfuffled/pseuds/imkerfuffled
Summary: “Weclip their wings!” Gabriel grinned just a little wider than physically possible, and Beelzebub looked at him like he’d… well, not like he’d grown a second head. That happened in Hell sometimes. They looked at him like he’d suggested they Rise and he Fall. “Beezlebub, you’re a genius!”“I am?”“If they don’t have their wings -- their powers -- then they won’t be able to move against us,” Gabriel said, eagerly waiting for Beelzebub to catch on, “And if we wipe their memories first -- give them new ones -- they won’t suspect a thing.”“Will you just get to the point?” Beelzebub whined.Gabriel’s smile grew, if anything, even wider. “We turn them human.”A full year has passed since the Armageddon That Didn't. Crowley and Aziraphale believe they've escaped the wrath of Hell and Heaven, respectively, but Hell and Heaven don't plan on letting them off so easily. If they can't be killed, they'll just have to be taken out of commission some other way.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Partially inspired by an idea my sister and I had, and partially inspired by the zeitgeist of Good Omens fanfiction, as I know this has been done before. Title taken from the Doctor Who episode during, coincidentally enough, David Tennant's reign. 
> 
> This may or may not be continued, because I'm lazy by nature and a very slow writer to boot.

**One Year Ago: Three Weeks After The End of the World**

 

St. James’ Park was, by all accounts, an excellent place for clandestine meetings of all sorts. It was nice and open, with too few decent hiding places to squirrel away one’s fellow operatives for an ambush, at least without said operatives running into their enemy counterparts like two people reaching a door at the same time and awkwardly trying to decide who would go through first. Besides, there were too many innocent people, oblivious to all the underhanded dealings going on around them, lingering around for any one side to justify the resulting paperwork that a real scene would create. 

Gabriel watched from across the pond as a besuited and bespectacled man extolled the virtues of turning double agent for MI6 to an equally besuited and bespectacled woman with a little Iranian flag pinned to her lapel. With the vague curiosity of someone waiting in a long queue and desperately looking for something to entertain him, he took a peek into the spies’ souls, just deep enough to see that they were both earmarked for Down Below. Ironic, really, how fervently each believed their own side to be the only truly Good one. If it weren’t for the fact the Heaven really was, unequivocally, the Good side, Gabriel might draw a parallel to his own current situation. 

Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Angels were not known for their self-awareness. 

He stood next to a park bench, his hands stuffed in his pockets for want of something better to do with them, his shoulders subconsciously and uncharacteristically hunched over slightly. He wasn’t looking forward to this meeting. It felt uncomfortably like something Aziraphale would do, and given that Aziraphale was the entire reason he was standing here like a lost golden retriever in a park full of cats, that did not make him feel any better about himself. 

A duck waddled up to him hopefully.

“Fat lot of good that’ll do ‘em,” a strident voice said, walking up to stand next to him. 

Gabriel definitively did not jump, but he did turn abruptly to face the newcomer. They were short -- almost comically so, Gabriel thought -- with sallow skin and black hair that looked like it had never known the concept of a comb. They had left the flies and ceremonial fly hat in Hell, much to Gabriel’s relief, but the rest of their outfit was not much better. The black shoes and pants looked alright, if a little ill-fitting, but for some ungodly reason they had decided to wear what Gabriel could only assume was an actual fishing net on top of their fading, fraying button-down. Gabriel grimaced but wisely decided against commenting on it. 

“Pardon me?” he said. The duck, upon seeing Beezlebub -- Lord of Flies, Prince of Demons -- gave a strangled quack and quickly flapped away.

“Them.” Beelzebub cocked their head toward the pair on the bench that Gabriel had been eyeing. “She’s already a triple agent for MI5. He’s wasting his time.”

“Oh. Well… Humans. Not the smartest feathers in a wing.” Gabriel shrugged. 

Beelzebub gave him a funny look. “Isn’t that, you know, ‘heretical?’” They put the last word in air quotes.

“What?” Gabriel exclaimed, trying and failing to not look taken aback. 

“Well, aren’t you lot supposed to… _love_ … humans un--unquestionably. Un-whatever-ably. You know what I mean.” Beelzebub scowled.

“Unconditionally?” Gabriel said, mostly to give himself time to put himself back on solid footing. “I -- yes, of course. I _do._ I -- Look, I wouldn’t expect _you_ of all people to understand _love_.”

Beelzebub made a _harumph_ noise in the back of their throat and muttered, “ _Angels._ ”

“ _Demons,_ ” Gabriel muttered back.

Both entities were silent for a few moments, giving Gabriel the opportunity to really study his occult counterpart. They looked… frazzled. Worn down. Tired. Gabriel, much to his surprise, found himself relating. When he’d readied himself for their meeting this morning, he’d been shocked to see dark circles under his corporation’s eyes, which, Sandalphon had informed him, was a sign of fatigue in humans. Given that Gabriel didn’t need sleep, this was worrying indeed.

He’d never stopped to consider that Beelzebub might be feeling the strain of the failed Armageddon as well. 

“Look,” he said, his voice coming out softer than he’d intended,[1] “Let’s just get on with it, alright? No use arguing when there’s work to do.” He smoothed down his jacket, which didn’t need it. 

“Yeah. Right. Work.” Beelzebub straightened their back, which did nothing to add to their height. 

Gabriel bit the inside of his cheek. Beelzebub chewed themselves a new scab on their lip. 

“Soooo…” They said.

“Yes,” he said. 

They continued to stare awkwardly at each other. 

“Aziraphale--” Gabriel began.

“Crowley--” Beelzebub said at the same time. They both clammed up.

“After you,” Gabriel said, motioning for them to continue. 

Beelzebub sighed and chewed on their lip again. “It’s just… What _are_ they? Has this ever happened before?” they finally shouted, startling away another duck that was considerably braver than the first. 

“No!” Gabriel huffed, “I’ve gone through all the records.[2] There’s _nothing_ to suggest this should even be possible.”

“Well, we have to do _zzzomething_ about them,” Beelzebub said, “We can’t just let them run around like that, defying Satan and… and your one all at once. It’s just _wrong._ And not the good kind of wrong.”

“But how are we supposed to get rid of them? We can’t kill them; we just proved that. Unless you’ve got an idea, of course?” Gabriel said, trying not to sound hopeful.

Beelzebub glared at him. “I was hoping _you_ would,” they admitted sourly. 

Gabriel grunted and rocked uncomfortably on the balls of his feet. Beelzebub stuffed their hands into their pockets in a mirror of Gabriel’s earlier posture. A third duck waddled up to the pair, and Beelzebub kicked at it. 

“Well, this was a waste of time, then,” Gabriel grumbled. 

“Unlezzz…” Beelzebub grimaced at the sound of their peculiar lisp and fell silent. 

“Unless?”

“Unless we _don’t_ kill them,” they said slowly. Gabriel nodded for them to continue. “We just… clip their wings, so to speak. Put them out of commission.”

“But how?” Gabriel asked, “I suppose I could make Aziraphale Fall. Get him off _my_ hands.”

“No! You can’t just pawn him off on me. _I_ don’t want him!”

“Well… What then?”

“I don’t know; I’m not doing _all_ the work here!”

“Oh.”

Once again, they lapsed into silence. 

Gabriel blinked. Surely it couldn’t be so simple? Of course, simple was a relative term. It would, in actuality, be incredibly complex. The preparations they’d have to make alone… Nevermind creating the actual spell… “‘Clip their wings?’ Brilliant!”

“Huh?”

“We _clip their wings!_ ” Gabriel grinned just a little wider than physically possible, and Beelzebub looked at him like he’d… well, not like he’d grown a second head. That happened in Hell sometimes. They looked at him like he’d suggested they Rise and he Fall. “Beezlebub, you’re a genius!”

“I am?”

“If they don’t have their wings -- their powers -- then they won’t be able to move against us,” Gabriel said, eagerly waiting for Beelzebub to catch on, “And if we wipe their memories first -- give them new ones -- they won’t suspect a thing.”

“Will you just get to the point?” Beelzebub whined. 

Gabriel’s smile grew, if anything, even wider. “ _We turn them human.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Gabriel had always struggled to maintain control over his corporation’s voice. There was that time with Mary, for instance. Nice young woman, he’d thought. Everyone had said she was reasonable. Sure, maybe he’d got a bit carried away with the booming angelic voice, but that was no reason for the girl to throw a spatula at his head. He’d gone to great lengths to keep that particular part of the story out of the Bible, but he was pretty sure at least one had slipped through his fingers, because Aziraphale always gave him strange looks when the Annunciation was brought up.[return to text]
> 
> 2He had not, of course, done this himself. He’d ordered the Angel of Records to go through all six thousand-plus years of them for him, and the Angel of Records was now not speaking to Gabriel. [return to text]


	2. Day One: Crowley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read somewhere, probably on Neil Gaiman's tumblr, that in the Cursed Movie That (Thankfully) Never Was, the producers got it into their heads that Aziraphale couldn't be a bookseller and instead had to work at the British Museum. I also vaguely remember Crowley having owned a nightclub in this scenario, but I may have just imagined that, so if anyone knows a source for it I'd love to see it. Anyway, that's where I took Crowley and Aziraphale's human occupations from.

**Present Day**

 

In the end, the preparation stage took a full year. A year in which Beelzebub and Gabriel met up increasingly often to create two entire human lives from scratch, all ready to have their occupants dropped down in the middle of them. A year in which Crowley and Aziraphale lived their own lives blissfully unaware that they hadn't escaped the wrath of Heaven and Hell for good. 

A year passed quickly for immortal beings. 

* * *

Anthony J. Crowley did not go by the name Anthony. In fact, he went by anything but Anthony. It wasn’t that he _disliked_ the name -- as far as names went, he couldn’t have picked one he liked more -- he just liked Crowley better. Always had.

Crowley lived in a top-floor flat that most people would consider far too large for one person, and Crowley would emphatically disagree. It was sparsely furnished in that way that only rich people could enjoy. The only color in the entire place, beside the rich, red silk sheets on Crowley’s bed, were the luxurious plants that covered every surface and wall of the living room, coming in all different shades of green. They were the best plants in all of London, Crowley liked to say. Not that anybody else was ever up there to test that claim. 

On this particular late morning, Crowley awoke to the sound of mechanical screeching drilling directly into his ears as, outside, construction workers started their day. He didn’t remember construction workers being there yesterday, but then again, this was London; there were always construction workers somewhere.[1] He groaned and fumbled around on his bedside table for… something? Glasses?

“Fucking hell,” he muttered. How hung over was he that he thought he needed glasses? Because he definitely was hung over: the headache, the disorientation, the complete and utter void in his memory of last night… all telltale signs. Hungover on a workday and up early to boot. Brilliant. 

Crowley crawled out of bed and stumbled to his bathroom, sparing a cursory glare at the wall opposite his desk which always, no matter what he put there, managed to look empty and out of place. He stared blankly into the mirror, brown eyes staring blankly back at him, and scowled. This was going to be a long day.

Several hours later, he would amend that statement: not only was the day going to be long, it was going to be agonizingly so. Everything that could go wrong did, as well as several things that he’d never considered could. First, the hangover took its second victim from his memories: namely, every last recollection of how to use a razor. He picked it up like he did every morning and just stared at it for an embarrassingly long time. Surely he couldn’t just _forget_ how to shave? It was like… whatever it was that humans could do without thinking. Yet here he was, standing in front of the mirror with his razor in hand, struggling to remember a single clear instance in which he’d ever done this before.[2]

Not for the first time, and not for the last, he wondered if alcohol was really worth the effort.

Next he discovered not one, not two, but three separate leaf spots during his morning check up. Far away, the man-shaped being with the deep voice looked on in horror as Crowley spent the next twenty-three minutes screaming obscene things at his plants, while the something-shaped being next to him grumbled about “improper use of demonic terror.” The screaming did nothing to improve the plants’ heath, which in turn did nothing to improve Crowley’s foul mood. He felt like it should do both.

Bicycles! That's what people could do without thinking.

His mood was further not improved when he learned that somehow, overnight, every single one of his appliances, from his TV to his coffee machine, had come unplugged. If it weren’t for the fact that he’d be able to smell them, he’d suspect his flat had rats.

Wait… What?

Even by his standards, this was a _weird_ hangover. 

Despite waking up early, he left the flat thirty minutes late for work only to discover that his Bentley, his prized possession, the light of his life, was completely out of petrol. Not a drop left in her.[3]

He spent the next five minutes screaming more obscene things into his steering wheel. 

* * *

“You’re late.” The bartender didn’t look up as the front doors to Eden[4] burst open exactly one hour and three minutes after Crowley was supposed to have got in. 

“I’m the bloody owner,” Crowley hissed, “I get here when I want to get here.”

“Well then,” said the bartender, “You got here late.”

Crowley grumbled something about car trouble and having to take an Uber.

“ _You_ had car trouble?” 

“Shut up!”

The interior of the small nightclub looked exactly how one would expect a nightclub to look before opening hours: both neon-lit and dark at the same time, and impossibly empty. A heavy, albeit quiet for the moment, bass beat from the speakers echoed off every gleaming surface, and the lights from the bar backlit the bartender as he tutted. 

Crowley was almost as proud of this place as he was of his plants -- several of which he’d transplanted here some time ago to add to the garden motif -- which was why, when his feet smacked slightly against the linoleum as he strode across its surface, he looked down and frowned. 

“Why,” he said slowly, in the same tone of voice he used with his plants, “is the floor _sticky_? Dave!”

The bartender raised his eyebrows to indicate he was listening.

“Where’s that bloody janitor? I swear, when I get my hands on him, I’m going to _flay him alive_.”[5]

The door to the changing rooms clattered open, and a young woman half-dressed in lacy white lingerie hopped down the stairs two at a time, adjusting her matching fluffy halo as she went. “Oh good, you’re here,” she said, “Beatrice just called in to say her morning sickness has set in, and also she can’t fit into her leathers anymore, so she’s starting her maternity leave a week early.[6] Can Shannon come in as the backup devil?”

Oh, it was going to be a long day indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1“Did we put the jackhammers there?” a bored-sounding voice asked from far away, whose owner was throwing popcorn in the air and catching approximately none of it in their mouth, “It’s a nice touch.”  
> “No, they showed up last week, remember?” replied a much deeper voice, whose owner vanished the fallen popcorn with a wave of his hand and a disapproving frown, “We thought they might cause a discrepancy, so we tried installing some at his real -- er, his old -- well, not this apartment, but that… didn’t work.”  
> “Oh, right.” The bored voice snickered. “Your people went and fucked that up.”  
> The deeper voice ground his teeth and wisely said nothing. [return to text]
> 
> 2“What is he doing?” asked the bored voice, sounding less bored and more confused.  
> “He’s shaving. Duh.”  
> “But he’s _not_.”  
> “Did he just… miracle it away before?”  
> “Flash bastard.”[return to text]
> 
> 3“Did he miracle _everything_ to get it to work?” the deep voice asked.  
> “No wonder he sleeps all the time; he’s constantly burnt out!” screeched the no-longer-remotely bored voice.  
> “This would never be allowed Upstairs. We’d slap so many sanctions on him he’d--” He was unable to complete his sentence due to the large bucket of popcorn that suddenly hit him in the side of the head. [return to text]
> 
> 4The deeper voice frowned, for the fifty-seventh time, at the name, and the bored one preemptively threw another handful of popcorn at him.[return to text]
> 
> 5This, the bored voice thought, was the _proper_ use of demonic terror.[return to text]
> 
> 6“Why did we make one of the strippers pregnant again?” asked the deep voice.  
> “That wasn’t us; that was one of the human souls we got to consult.”  
> “Oh, right, the one with the… what did he call it?”  
> “The pregnancy kink.”  
> “... Right. Why did we get human souls to consult again?”[return to text]


	3. Day One: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was not raised Catholic, so I may very well have overlooked something crucial in my google crash course, in which case please tell me and I'll get it fixed.

Aaron Zachariah Fell[1] had never particularly cared for his first two names. It wasn’t that he _disliked_ Aaron Zachariah. It just never really felt _right._ It never felt like _him._ Never had. He went by Mr. Fell at work, and that was good enough for him.

On this particular Sunday morning, he awoke to the ear splitting whine of his alarm clock. With his usual groan, he fumbled on the bedside table to turn it off and only managed to knock it onto the floor. That, at least, managed to make it shut up, though he suspected it might be because it had broken.

“Bugger,” he muttered. He reached down, stretching his arm as far as it could go, then a little farther. Too far. He went tumbling right over the edge and landed in a painful heap of limbs and sheets. 

“Ohhhh,” he groaned again, “ _Bugger_.”

“You okay?” A voice called out, muffled by the walls separating them. 

“Yes, I’m… I’m fine,” he said, picking himself gingerly off the floor. He pressed a palm to his temple and massaged it, wincing slightly at the pain. Did he have too much drink last night? It would certainly explain the unusually thick fog clouding his brain, even first thing in the morning. He searched his memories, but the only things he could recall of the day before were the smell of fertilizer and the sensation of someone’s fingers carding through his… wings?

Must have been a dream. A tooth-rottingly sweet dream that left him aching for a life that didn’t exist, but a dream nonetheless. He shook off the last lingering traces of sleep and shuffled out the door, where he was immediately accosted by a brilliantly orange-haired woman wearing an oversized football jersey and little else. 

“Hey, I bought a thing of kolaches from that bakery you like, if you want something to eat before you leave,” she said, thrusting a paper bag into his hands. 

For one short, perplexing second, Aaron panicked, thinking he’d left the door open on accident and a customer had wandered in before hours. With a quick shake of his head, he came to his senses. This was just Stacie Morgan, his flatmate.[2]

He wasn’t even in charge of locking up at the museum. 

“You _sure_ you're okay?” Stacie asked, “You seem a little out of it.”

“What? Oh, no, just haven’t woken up yet,” he said with a mollifying smile. A quick peek into the bag told him the pastries easily met his exacting standards. “Thank you for these; they look scrumptious.”

Stacie mouthed " _scrumptious"_ with an exasperated look. 

Aaron had met Stacie a several years ago in the front row of a Queer Theory In Literature class he’d taken for fun, where she’d strongly disagreed with him on some topic concerning ancient Greco-Roman sexualities and had kept that feud going all semester. They, of course, had been fast friends ever since, and, when it came time for Stacie to graduate, she’d needed help affording a London flat and Aaron had needed help supporting his rare book habit and exorbitant restaurant bills. It only made sense for them to room together. 

Their flat looked like an episode of a hoarder’s show, and it was largely Aaron’s fault. The living room doubled as a small library to store all the books Aaron didn’t trust a storage company with, alongside the few trashy magazines Stacie indulged in and Aaron pretended not to. Stacie’s chords, and consoles, and cases holding the wrong video games were strewn beneath the television on one wall, and on the opposite, wedged between two sagging bookcases, was an overstuffed armchair old enough to belong in a museum if it hadn’t seen better days. 

Aaron’s room looked much the same, with the overflow from the bookshelves taking up most of the free space. It was all organized in a way that some people might call tidy, if “some people” excluded everyone who wasn’t Aaron. Stacie’s room, by contrast, no one could call tidy except for when she expected company and threw everything that was previously on _her_ floor onto _Aaron’s_ floor, much to his frequent consternation. 

The kitchen was the only part of the flat that was truly tidy, and that was only because it rarely saw use unless Aaron had watched too much of _The Great British Bake Off_ recently.

Aaron got ready that morning just as he did every Sunday, though this time with the happy addition of Stacie’s kolaches.[3] He picked out his least worn waistcoat, paired it with one of his old-fashioned overcoats and his fancy pair of shoes, distinguishable from his everyday shoes only by their level of shine. Nibbling on the last of the kolaches with only a shred of guilt -- justified by telling himself it would be rude to refuse Stacie’s gift -- he made his way downstairs. For the few crucial minutes before church started, he stood patiently on the curb, waiting for… what, a ride? From who? He rolled his eyes at his own absentmindedness this morning and walked the three and a half blocks to his church. 

The Old Holy Redeemer Church was a respectable brick building only a few pointy bits short of gothic revival which loomed over Aaron like a disapproving nun.[4] Aaron slipped through the doors just as the altar boys made to close them. He quickly bowed his head in the vague direction of the tabernacle, figuring God would probably understand him not genuflecting when he was late. Flashing apologetic smiles at everyone who turned around in the middle of the Penitential Rite to watch his walk of shame, he slid into the last pew and pulled the leaflet out of the back of the pew in front of him. As the priest said his bit, Aaron’s eyes caught on the second reading: Romans 1:26-27. With a growing sense of dread, he glanced down at the homily -- titled “The Sins of Sodom” -- and stifled a groan.

Oh, this was going to be a long hour.[5]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Gabriel, in the process of coming up with a human name for him, had insisted on something Biblical. Beelzebub had suggested Abbadon. Gabriel had banned them from naming anyone ever again.[return to text]
> 
> 2In the course of Gabriel’s research for this project, he[6] had meticulously gone through the files on Aziraphale’s historical activities for any common threads Gabriel could use to make Aziraphale’s human life feel authentic. He’d discovered that Aziraphale had, without fail, been involved in every single queer community and/or movement in whatever area he was stationed since the advent of human sexuality. This confused Gabriel for multiple reasons, but, if it meant so much to Aziraphale, he figured he should probably include it. His cursory research into whatever the hell a “queer community” was -- and, while he was at it, whatever the hell “queer” even meant these days -- told him that queer people liked to surround themselves with other queer people, so, being a little confused about the concept of gender as well, he gave Aziraphale a lesbian roommate. [return to text]
> 
> 3“Uh… He’s eating,” Gabriel said.  
> “So?” Beelzebub asked.  
> “So, it’s Sunday,” Gabriel said slowly, as if speaking to a particularly obtuse toddler.  
> “ _So_?”  
> “He isn’t supposed to eat before Communion.”  
> Beelzebub’s eyes widened, and they burst into cackling peals of laughter which hit Gabriel’s ears like nails on a chalkboard. He winced, and therefore didn’t hear their angel-turned-human cheerfully humming Billy Joel’s “Only The Good Die Young” as he buttoned up his waistcoat.[return to text]
> 
> 4Gabriel had chosen Aziraphale’s apartment specifically for its proximity to this particular church. He still held out hope for the, well, redeeming properties of the name, despite the minor blip in the pre-mass fast. Aziraphale, Gabriel reasoned, was still adjusting to being human, even if he didn’t know it. Surely he could be cut a little slack.[return to text]
> 
> 5Far away, the hour ended with a disgruntled Archangel muttering things like “we were _very clear_ the sin was _attempted rape_ ” and “how the _hell_ do you fuck it up that badly?” while the Prince of Hell cackled and swore _that_ particular misinterpretation was all on the humans.[return to text]
> 
> 6He, in this particular case, meant the Angel of Records.[return to text]


	4. Days Two Through Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very very slight reference to Diane Duane's Deep Wizardry in this one. Is this just my excuse to tell people to read her Young Wizards series? Why yes it is. I feel like Good Omens fans would like it; it has similar themes of the inherent awesomeness of being human and such, and also I like it and I'm a Good Omens fan, so
> 
> (There's also a much less slight reference to Clive Staples' The Screwtape Letters later on.)

Time passed. Days turned into weeks. Life went on as it seemingly always had for Crowley and Aaron. And yet… Neither could shake the feeling that something was missing. They brushed it off, as all humans did. It was normal, after all, to go through life with a nameless sorrow sitting at the bottom of one’s soul. 

* * *

That weariness that planted itself deep in Crowley’s bones and took root, as if some part of him never got the memo that the rest of him was awake and alert, he just blamed on the stress of trying to find a decent replacement devil during Beatrice’s maternity leave. Crowley ran a tight ship here at Eden, and he held his employees to the same high standards as he did his plants at home. So far, not one of the countless people he’d interviewed had met those standards. 

As the latest disappointment—a young man who, while promising on paper, had tripped off the stage a minute into his audition and pulled half the climbing hydrangeas off their trellis in the process—left with his metaphorical tail between his legs, Crowley slumped in his barstool and resisted tearing his hair out by the roots. 

“Well,” Dave said, already pouring his boss a healthy serving of whiskey after the disaster they’d just witnessed,[1] “That…”

“Went down like a lead balloon, yeah,” Crowley groaned. He accepted the drink with an eloquent grunt and glared at his ruined hydrangeas. “Get that bloody janitor in here, will you? Can’t have the next candidate walk in on that.” He gestured in the flowers’ vague direction while knocking back the whiskey. Normally, he preferred a nice, aged wine, but times like these called for stronger medicine.

Dave nodded silently and left the bar.

The problem, Crowley decided as he nursed his drink, was location. A nightclub that offered both male and female eye candy, especially one with religious overtones, should really be in Soho—it was technically still the red-light district, after all—but this was the place he’d been able to afford when he’d started the gig, so this was the place he got. Funny, he didn’t remember even looking at any Soho locations. Maybe real estate had been too costly then.[2] 

Dave came back with the janitor in tow, breaking Crowley out of his musings. The janitor was a man with curly grey hair and too-large teeth that reminded Crowley of someone he couldn’t quite recall. He instructed the man to clean up the mess on the stage and, once the janitor was safely out of earshot, leaned in to hiss in Dave’s ear, “The floor is _still_ sticky.”

“It’s a nightclub,” Dave whispered, “It’s bound to get a little sticky sometimes.”

“Not if it’s got any class it isn’t! I’ve worked hard to give this place class, and I’ll be damned if that bloody janitor ruins it.” Crowley glared at the back of the janitor’s head. “What’s the point of him if he can’t even do his job right?”

“Well,” said Dave, “you can always fire him.”

“What, and have to go through twice the interviews? No. But I swear if this happens one more time...” Raising his voice to get the janitor’s attention, Crowley shouted, “If you can’t keep the bloody floors clean it’ll be your spot I’m interviewing for next!” and stomped away to find Angela before the next candidate showed up.

* * *

 

_Ding._

Aaron sighed heavily and a tad dramatically as, for the seventh time in one minute, Stacie’s notification alert went off. He’d been irritable lately, ever since that sermon, and he wasn’t sure why. Oh, it wasn’t the sermon itself; that he could easily shrug off as just another unfortunate reality of, well, reality. It had never bothered him before, and he didn’t intend to let it start now. The fact that he’d avoided going to church the next week had less to do with that and more to do with having procrastinated getting out of bed so long he’d have arrived halfway through mass. And the fact that he’d avoided going to church again a week later had more to do with not wanting to face awkward questions about why he’d been gone the week before.[3]

In any case, he couldn’t take out his irritation on Stacie. That would be rude. He could, however, heavily imply that he would like very much for her to turn off her notifications while he was trying to read, please. 

She did not get the hint. Instead, she snatched up her phone and began typing furiously, a sly smile spreading across her face. 

“Planning a date?” he asked, glancing at her over the top of his reading glasses. 

“I wouldn’t call it a _date,_ really,” Stacie said.

“Ah.” Aaron’s eyes widened briefly. He pursed his lips and returned his attention to his first edition copy of C.S. Lewis’ _The Screwtape Letters._ [4] 

Stacie laughed. “You know, if you ever decide to get off your high horse about casual sex, you might try it sometime. It’s fun. Could get you out of that funk you’re in.”

“ _I beg your pardon_?” Aaron said, doing nothing to hide his indignation. 

“You heard me.”

Aaron spluttered for a moment before rediscovering the English language. “I am not ‘on a high horse—’” Stacie snorted. “—Really! I just… prefer not knowing the details of other people’s sex lives.” He straightened his back and his bow tie, which he still wore despite having returned home from work hours ago. “And, I might add, I most certainly am not in a _funk_!”

“You are too; you’ve been moping about for weeks,” Stacie said.

“Why, I _never_ —”

“You bought a plant, Aaron.[5]”

“And what does that have to do with—”

“It’s what lonely people do. I heard it on the radio, or something.”

“Now look here—”

“Besides, I heard you on the phone with Earl.”

Aaron had no good defense for that. Earl Westermeyer was a writer friend of Aaron’s.[6] He had not, per se, actually published anything yet, but he liked to run ideas past Aaron, who had a knack for picking out bestsellers long before anyone else could. It was during one of these phone sessions, after Earl had taken Aaron’s carefully downplayed hint and decided to start over on his current project, that Aaron had confessed his current dilemma. 

The truth was, Aaron couldn’t shake the feeling that his life was one endless slog. He liked his job—after all, he got to work with priceless historical manuscripts every day and get paid to do it—but after a while it just felt… repetitive. Boring. Unfulfilling.

Lonely. 

Sure, he had Stacie, and Earl, but something still felt off. Missing. That nameless sorrow had set in and refused to leave. He might call it the beginnings of a midlife crisis if he didn’t associate midlife crises with too-fast sports cars and too much hair dye, two things he would never consider getting in six thousand years. 

“We need to get you a boyfriend,” Stacie said.

“ _We_?”

“Yes ‘we.’” Stacie gave him a pointed look. “When, in all my years of knowing you, have you ever gone on a date?”

“I—”

“Never,” she spoke over him, “For that matter… Have you _ever_ been on a date?”

“Well, I—Yes I have!” he spluttered. 

“Really?” Stacie sounded legitimately surprised.

“He, um, I think his name was Oscar.[7]”

Stacie’s eyes widened, and he could practically see her make a mental note to ask many more questions about this Oscar later. “But none since I’ve known you?”

“Er, no—”

“Well then, you need to get back in the field. We could, I don’t know, set up a dating profile for you online.” She held out her phone, which was open to a long chat conversation on OkCupid. 

Aaron tried to avoid looking too close at the chat and instead looked at her like she’d suggested the world was ending. 

“Yeah, best not; you wouldn’t like the guys on Grindr anyway. I’m sure I can come up with something else.”

“Oh dear,” said Aaron, who had rather hoped that would be the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1Angela, the head dancer and, ironically, Crowley’s most popular devil, had walked out in a huff when their candidate had tripped, and she didn’t plan to come back anytime soon. [return to text]
> 
> 2The answer was, of course, that Gabriel and Beelzebub had already decided to keep Aziraphale in Soho, and neither of them wanted to risk he and Crowley running into each other. One of the larger points of all this—or, rather, an ulterior motive that neither Gabriel nor Beelzebub would ever admit to having—was to give their disobedient employees a chance to return to the fold once their mortal forms died. Like prodigal sons, Gabriel would say. It would be stupid of them to let Crowley and Aziraphale ruin that by corrupting and redeeming each other, respectively.  
> Neither Gabriel nor Beelzebub had thought to put them in different cities, nor would it ever occur to them.[return to text]
> 
> 3By the second week of avoiding going to church, Gabriel was about ready to scream. Or cry. He settled for burying his face in his hands and ignoring Beelzebub’s snide remarks.[return to text]
> 
> 4Beelzebub’s eyes caught on the title, and they nearly jumped out of their seat in shock. “Who told him about Screwtape?”  
> “Who?”  
> “That—that writer! Who told him about Screwtape? Is he one of ours?” Beelzebub waved an indignant finger at the book.  
> “What, Clive?” Gabriel said, looking affronted, “Hardly! As if Clive Staples Lewis would ever go to _your_ —Hang on…” Gabriel squinted at the title for the first time. “Who’s Screwtape?”  
> “Screwtape! Duke of Hell, Undersecretary of the Department for Tempting! _The_ Screwtape!”  
> Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the book, then narrowed his eyes at the man holding it, then slid his eyes across to the other screen to narrow them at Crowley, who was currently shouting at a half-empty trellis to get it to “grow, damn you!” Beelzebub, following Gabriel’s eyes and train of thought, began to buzz dangerously.[return to text]
> 
> 5He had, indeed, bought a plant part way through his second week as a human. It had been an impulse purchase he’d seen outside the local Tesco, and for some reason it had reminded him of home. Or maybe a specific person who reminded him of home. Or maybe… well, maybe he’d just wanted something green in the flat and was overthinking things.  
> In any case, he’d situated it on top of his dresser and promptly forgot to water it ever again. Occasionally, he thought about it and felt guilty.[return to text]
> 
> 6Gabriel had picked up on another trend in Aziraphale’s human aquaintances, namely that he gravitated to wordsmiths who hadn’t yet, but would soon, become famous. Not wanting to expend the energy to create a bestselling author, and unwilling or unable to come up with former publications for said author, Gabriel had instead created Earl, a perpetually aspiring writer always convinced he was on the brink of making it big.[return to text]
> 
> 7“Oscar?” Gabriel furrowed his brow. “Did we give him Oscar?”  
> “Nope. No prior relationships for either of them.”  
> “Then who…?”  
> “Must’ve been someone from before bleeding through his memories.”  
> “ _What_? No. That’s not—” Gabriel remembered the large collection of first editions of someone named Oscar Wilde’s, many of which had some very strange inscriptions in them which were suddenly looking much less strange. He resolved to look into this Oscar Wilde once Beelzebub was gone. “Oh.”  
> Beelzebub narrowed their eyes at him.[return to text]


	5. Day Twenty-One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To fully experience this chapter, it is best to find a playlist of the soundtrack to Lucifer and crank up the volume until your headphones warn you about the risk of hearing loss.

“I’ve got it!” Stacie said one Sunday afternoon. Enough time had passed since her threat to set Aaron up with someone that he didn’t quite panic, but he did freeze, his forkful of truly horrendous Chinese takeout halfway to his mouth. It was Stacie’s turn to pick lunch, and she had terrible taste.

“I’m taking you to a nightclub,” she said.[1]

“Oh, no. No, no, no,” Aaron said, shaking his head emphatically, “Absolutely not. They wouldn’t even let me in.”

Stacie shrugged. “I know one of the dancers at this place in Mayfair.[2] She can get us in.”

Aaron pursed his lips. “Just why would I want to go to a nightclub only to watch you fawn over your dancer?”

“She’s not _my_ dancer,” Stacie insisted, though her cheeks went a little red at the thought, “And there’s male dancers too—not my thing, but you’d appreciate it—I’ve seen a picture of the new guy they hired, and even I have to admit he can _get it._ ”

Aaron hummed noncommitally, perfectly conveying both his respect for a man even a lifelong lesbian would admit was attractive and his continued lack of interest nevertheless.

“It’s kind of an unofficial gay bar,” Stacie continued, “I think it just opened recently, or it changed owners, or something, ‘cos I only just heard about it a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to be really nice.”

“I don’t care if it’s ‘nice.’ It’s still a _nightclub._ Can you really picture _me_ in a nightclub?” Aaron said with a frown, trying and failing to do just that. The closest he could get was imagining himself asking a woman in a skimpy bunny outfit to “please get off my table. I am trying to eat.”

“They’re supposed to have a _phenomenal_ alcohol selection,” Stacie said, reaching across the coffee table with her foot to nudge his leg.

Aaron hummed again, now conveying his disapproval of her underhanded tactics.

“I’ll stop bugging you about your love life if you go with me.” Stacie’s nudging grew insistent. 

This time, Aaron stayed silent, but his conviction did waver. Then again, did he really believe her?

No. No he did not. 

He glared at her with all the intensity of a disgruntled pidgeon. “There is no way,” he said firmly, “in Heaven or in Hell, that you will ever drag me into that club."

* * *

 

Aaron shuffled forward as the long line of partiers snaked its way through the doors of the nightclub. Each time they opened to let another person in, a heavy bass beat blasted its way onto the sidewalk. Aaron could already tell it was going to give him a headache. 

He made sure to glare at Stacie every so often, just in case she’d forgotten he was here under duress. She shivered slightly against the perpetual London drizzle in her crop top and shorts, but Aaron felt this was divine justice for forcing him here and didn’t even consider offering her his coat.

Finally, they reached the front of the line. The bouncer took one look at Aaron’s clothes and said, “I don’t think so, mate.”

“Well, that was that. We tried. Guess we’ll go home now.” Aaron spun around on his heels, but Stacie grabbed him by the arm to keep him from escaping, nearly unbalancing him in the process. 

“Not so fast, you,” she said, pulling him to her side. To the bouncer, she added, “We’re here to see Shannon; she’s a friend of mine. Tell her it’s Stacie Morgan.”

He stared unblinkingly down at them for a moment, then slipped into the nightclub. Aaron squinted up through the rain at the glowing white sign that read “EDEN” and cursed himself for letting Stacie talk him into this.

The bouncer returned with a scowl and wordlessly motioned them through the doors. 

The noise hit him first, like a brick wall hitting a car at ninety miles an hour. His ears pounded in time with the music, which was reckless and enticing and not at all what Aaron would usually listen to.[3] Stacie might have said something, or maybe she just grabbed his arm again and dragged him inside. He couldn’t hear anything over the din. Next came the motion: everyone moving in every direction all at once, colors and lights flashing everywhere. If anything stood still, it was only for a moment. Finally, he was struck by the greenery. Everywhere he looked he saw plants: climbing the walls on trellises, forming miniature forests to artfully hide all the clandestine little nooks and crannies, even hanging in baskets from the ceiling. He could see why the place was called Eden, even if it was a bit on the nose.

Barely three paces into the club, he was accosted by a flurry of white feathers as a woman wearing something lacy and far too small for his taste rushed past him to greet Stacie. 

“You made it!” she shouted over the music, engulfing Stacie in a feathery hug that tickled Aaron’s nose even from two feet away. Behind her, winding his way around a pair of partiers joined at the lips, a man with dark red hair slouched forward, his hands stuffed unsuccessfully in his too-small pockets. He was what Aaron supposed most people would call stylish, and he walked with a strange, slithery gait, like someone who had only recently acquired legs. He looked perfectly at home in all the chaos of the club. 

The moment this strange man came into view, Aaron felt drawn to him in that offputting way that came of running into someone you used to know but had completely forgotten. He was so certain he’d met this man before. The memory was right there in the back of his mind, if only he were to dig around a little… but the harder he thought about it, the faster the sensation slipped through his fingers. By the time the man spoke, it was gone entirely, and Aaron shrugged if off as just another weird case of déjà vu. 

“So,” the man said, drawing out the vowel, “You must be, ah, Tracy?”

“Stacie,” said Stacie.

“Stacie,” he repeated, sticking out a hand for her to shake. “Anthony J. Crowley. I own the place. And this is... ?”

“Aaron Z. Fell,” Stacie cut in before Aaron could introduce himself, “He wants a lap dance.”

Aaron found himself momentarily speechless with horror and could only watch as Crowley looked him up and down appraisingly for a second longer than was strictly necessary.

“Guy or girl?” Crowley asked.

“Guy,” Stacie said.

“Now hold on a minute—” Aaron managed to get out. 

“You want a girl?” Crowley said, looking somewhat skeptical. 

“No!”

“Guy it is, then.” Crowley turned away and snapped his fingers, and, seemingly out of nowhere, a woman covered from head to toe in widely spaced strips of red leather materialized in front of them. “Angela, go bring me… bring me Damien. This guy’s gonna take him for a test drive.”

“Oh dear,” Aaron moaned, “No, there’s been a terrible mistake. I don’t _want_ a—a lap dance!”

“You promised,” Stacie said in a sing-song voice.

“I promised nothing,” Aaron said.

“Either I buy him a lap dance,” Stacie explained to Shannon and Crowley, “or he has to leave here with a man’s number. We agreed.”

“We did not,” Aaron said.

“Well, speaking as the person all the money’s going to, I know which I’d recommend,” Crowley said with a devilish grin, “If you do change your mind about the lap dance, you’ve got your pick of angel or demon.” 

“Angel or…?” Aaron looked around—really looked—for the first time. The sights that had blended together in his mind came back into sharp focus. Shannon was wearing feathery white wings and a matching halo. Angela was wearing sharp red horns and a matching tail. All around them, more haloes bobbed over the heads of the crowd, and tails peeked through the gaps between people. Angels and demons alike gyrated on platforms, sometimes paired off with their opposite number. One demon tore the halo off an angel and bit it seductively. 

“I don’t remember that from the Bible,” Aaron said wryly, vowing to never let Stacie talk him into anything ever again.

Stacie at least had the good grace to look sheepish, though it didn’t last long. Shannon tugged her away by the hand, and all of Stacie’s attention immediately turned to the sudden touch. 

“You’ve got half an hour, then it’s back to work,” Crowley called out to her retreating back. 

Aaron opened his mouth, almost prepared to throw away his pride and beg Stacie not to leave him alone in this place, but they’d already disappeared into the crowd. With a sigh, he tried to catch Crowley’s eye for a “Nice meeting you,” goodbye, but the club owner seemed distracted by something on the bottom of his snakeskin shoes, so Aaron simply wandered off to find the bar. It was time to test Stacie’s assertion on the quality of Eden’s alcohol, he decided.

* * *

 

Crowley was going to fire that bloody incompetent janitor the moment he set foot on the premises. No, he would wait until the end of the janitor’s shift to fire him so the place would at least get a mediocre cleaning job tonight. It would mean staying up later than Crowley would like, but if it fixed the sticky floors it would be worth it. 

There was, he discovered, one slight problem with this plan: he could not for the life of him remember the janitor’s name. He felt a little guilty about what this probably said about him as a person.[4] 

“Dave, my good man—” he said, sidling up next to the bartender.

“If you want something from me,” Dave interrupted, “pass me the limes first.”

Crowley slid the bowl of limes across the bar, and Dave slotted one onto the drink he was making. “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to answer it without any followup questions,” Crowley said.

“Go on.” Dave handed the margarita to a woman across the bar. 

“What’s the bloody janitor’s name?”

Dave gave him an incredulous look. “He’s your employee; shouldn’t you know his name?”

“I said no followup questions.” Crowley glared.

“I heard.” Dave effortlessly poured from three separate bottles at once without spilling a drop. “But you’re his boss. It’s not like this place has hundreds of employees you have to keep track of.”

“Keep talking like that and I’ll fire _you_ ,” Crowley grumbled. 

Dave laughed, slid the drink across the counter to its customer, and immediately got started on the next one. “No you won’t. I’m the best damn bartender you’re ever gonna get.”

Crowley grumbled unintelligibly under his breath. “I don’t need this. I’ve got—I’ve got a demon that needs training; I’ve got angel wings that need replacing; now I’ve got a bloody janitor that needs firing and no one who knows his name.”

Just as he was complaining about the angel wings, a man sitting alone across the bar looked up at him as though he’d heard Crowley call his name. Normally, Crowley wouldn’t take any notice of it, but this was the same man who’d come in with whatshername—Tracy, Shannon’s new not-girlfriend. He was… odd, and not only because his clothes looked about a century out of style. His attitude was nothing new; nervous sorts like him came in here all the time, fresh off the street and brand new to the gay club scene, unofficial or not. But there was something about this man… That strange sense of déjà vu returned in full force, like when one teetered on the brink of an epiphany but no matter how hard one tried it was just out of reach.

“Tell you what, Dave,” Crowley said, “I’ll give you a break. You go in the back and find his name, and I’ll take over for you here in the meantime.”

“That’s not a break. That’s more work,” Dave said, but he flipped his towel onto Crowley’s shoulder and moved to leave the bar anyway. “I want a raise.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Crowley rolled his eyes. 

Dave paused halfway up the stairs to the back rooms. “How do you write his checks?”

“Just do what I tell you!”

Crowley leaned his elbows on the bar, waiting for more paying customers to come his way. At the far end, a couple was steadily drinking their way through something enormous and fruity—he would have to check on them later—but the nearer and more pressing matter was Tracy’s friend... Andrew? Austin? Whatever his name was, his drink could do with refilling. 

“Like a top-up?” Crowley asked. 

The man started. “Oh? Oh, yes please.” A smile spread across his features, the kind that lit up his entire face, and despite his best efforts Crowley found his sour mood softening. 

“Coming right up,” Crowley said. He pulled the Talisker off the shelf and poured a generous helping into a glass. 

“Mr. Crowley, was it?” the man asked. 

“Just Crowley’s fine. It’s what everyone calls me.” Crowley slid the scotch over and added it to his tab. “And your name was…?”

“Aaron,” he said with another friendly smile. 

Aaron. At least Crowley had the first letter right. 

“So,” Crowley said, leaning on his elbows again, “you the religious sort, then?”

“Pardon?” Aaron looked up from his drink. 

“The look on your face when you realized what kind of place this was,” Crowley said with a light smirk, “Not the first time I’ve seen that look.”

“Oh!” Aaron flashed him another smile, this time a somewhat sheepish one. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean anything by it, I assure you.”

“Really? ‘Cause I felt a bit judged,” Crowley teased.

“Oh dear. I really am sorry. I’ve been told I can come off that way sometimes, but I honestly don’t mean to,” Aaron said, looking so genuinely apologetic that Crowley decided to let him off the hook. 

“Nah, it’s fine. I’m just joking.” 

Aaron chuckled nervously. After a moment, he added, “I am, though, since you asked. Religious, I mean. Catholic.” For some reason, he looked slightly embarrassed by the admission.[5] 

“Ah,” Crowley said, his smirk widening to a grin, “That’ll explain the judginess.”

“Yes, we are rather good at that, aren’t we?” Aaron laughed. 

Crowley pulled a wine glass off the rack above him and poured from a bottle he picked at random. “Not much good press about Catholicism lately,” he said, bringing the glass to his lips.

“No, there’s not,” Aaron sighed, “It’s disgusting what those men did, and frankly they deserve to burn in _what the hell are you doing?_ ”

Crowley took a long sip of the wine. “Drinking.”

“On the job?” Aaron looked scandalized. 

He shrugged. “I’m the owner. Who’s going to get after me for it?”

“Well, the police might.” 

“Pshh. As if my bouncer would ever let a cop in here.”

Aaron clicked his tongue disapprovingly, but his lips were still quirked in a faint smile, so Crowley counted it as a win. 

“See, there’s that judginess again,” he said, tipping his glass in Aaron’s direction. He took another sip and, almost as an afterthought, added, “The current pope does seem decent enough, though.”

“Hmm?”

“The pope. Seems a decent bloke to me. Not all high and mighty as you’d expect a pope to be.”

“Oh, yes. I do like him.” Aaron snuck furtive glances around the bar and leaned in, as if about to reveal some scandalous secret, “Sometimes I like to quote him to the more conservative members of the church and watch them trip over themselves trying to justify their stance.”

Crowley’s eyes widened, and his grin returned in full force. “Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”

The sound of a throat being pointedly cleared dragged his attention to the other end of the bar, where the couple had finished their fruity drink. The shorter man pointed at the empty glass and coughed again. 

Rude. 

“Yeah, what is it?” Crowley asked. 

“Dances With Wenches,” said the shorter man. 

Crowley was pretty sure that wasn’t a real drink. Thankfully, Dave reappeared holding a packet of papers. 

“These guys—” Crowley started to say.

“On it.” Dave grabbed a bottle off the shelf and got to work, silently handing Crowley that papers. From a glance, Crowley could tell they were the janitor’s job application. He glanced at the top; a large coffee stain obscured the name. He flipped to the last page; the signature was completely illegible. 

“Mother—” he groaned, “This was really all you could find?”

“Trust me, everything else was worse.” Dave stepped around Crowley to get the cranberry juice from the fridge. “You need to get your stuff organized.”

Crowley hissed under his breath and tossed the application over his shoulder.

“Problem?” Aaron asked.

“Just a slight issue with an employee. Nothing you need to worry about.” Crowley waved it off. “Now, where were we?”

Aaron nodded and took a sip of his drink. “I believe we were discussing me and my many surprises,” he said.

“Ah, yes.” Crowley raised his wine glass. “The openly gay Catholic man. Er… well, I assume…”

“No worries, you assume correctly,” Aaron said with another of his smiles, “In most circles, that is. Within church circles… not so much.” He grimaced and swilled his scotch. 

Crowley pulled a wry face. 

“I take it you’re not religious?” Aaron said. 

Crowley knew a tactical change of subject when he heard one. “Nah, not really. Think my mum took me to church… once… when I was real little. Seem to recall I had certain opinions on Noah’s Ark that the preacher didn’t appreciate. She never took me again.”

Aaron laughed: an understated sort of giggle that nevertheless managed to involve his whole body. It was infectious. Crowley found himself smiling the kind of sincere smile that he didn’t usually think suited him very well, but, just this once, he might make an exception. 

‘Odd’ didn’t even scratch the surface of what this man was, Crowley decided. He quickly schooled his expression into something more acceptable. It wouldn’t do to have his employees thinking he had a softer side.

They continued their idle chatting for what felt like mere minutes. The only indication, in Crowley’s mind, that more time might have passed came when he went to pour himself a third—or fourth, or fifth, or what-did-it-matter-anyway—glass of wine and the bottle came up empty. He stared at the lone drop of liquid slowly dribbling down the neck for longer than it probably should have taken to catch on, though, to his credit, he was much closer to his fifth glass. 

“That’sss odd,” he said.

“That’s gravity, is what it is,” Aaron, who was only slightly more sober than Crowley,[6] said.

“No, ‘s supposed to be…” With serpentine reflexes that belied his current state, Crowley snatched his phone out of his pocket. “ _Shit,_ is it eleven already?”

“Goodness, it’s that late?” Aaron squawked, “I have work in the morning!” He pulled out his own phone, and something about the image of this man, in clothes so outdated they could reasonably be called vintage, operating a modern mobile phone—granted, a mobile phone several models obsolete—made Crowley burst into undignified peals of laughter. 

“Oh dear,” Aaron said, either ignoring him or too busy scrolling on his screen to notice, “Stacie got bored and went home without me. _And_ she’s demanding to know who’s number I got. With a… I think that’s an eggplant at the end? No idea what that means.”

Crowley shrugged.

“She’s going to be absolutely unbearable if I go home empty handed,” Aaron groaned.

“Use a fake number,” Crowley suggested.

“What?”

“A fake number. I get it all the time—I mean, you know, _people,_ they do it all the time. _I_ don’t—anyway. She’ll never know.”

“What if she tries to look it up?” Aaron said, “Or what if she calls it?”

Crowley thought for a moment.

“Knowing her, she’ll _actually_ drag me back here for a lapdance.” Aaron grimaced. He scrolled up a little further. “Oh, look; she’s already threatening it!”

Crowley reached out and pulled a napkin out of its holder. He patted his pockets, remembered he was wearing womens’ jeans and therefore had no pockets, stood up, walked over to Dave, and lifted the pen from his apron pocket. Dave gave him a puzzled look and went back to blending a margarita. Back at his spot across from Aaron, Crowley scrawled something on the napkin and silently slid it across the counter. 

Aaron stared at it for a moment. “What is this?”

“My number.”

Aaron blinked. “Oh, no I couldn’t—”

“Sure you can. I’m assuming the only conditions of this deal are that, one: you get someone’s number, and, two: said number must be from a man?” Crowley counted off on his fingers.

“Well, yes…”

“Easy, then. I have a number, and I’m a man, generally speaking. Conditions met.” Crowley flashed a toothy grin. “Just do me a favor and, I don’t know, chat me up a bit when she asks.”

“I’m afraid you’re not quite, er, her type,” Aaron said weakly.

“Not like that!” Crowley scoffed, “Just, you know, make me look good. Say I’m tall, dark, and handsome, or something like that.”

Aaron looked him up and down and did not say a word.

“Er…” Crowley tried to lean against the wall of glass bottles behind him, thought better of it, and instead stood there awkwardly. 

“Well, uh,” Aaron finally said, “I should—I should really get going.”

“Oh, yeah, of course.”

“Thank you, for the… It was lovely meeting you.”

“Same here.”

“Well… goodbye. Maybe I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah, hope so… _Chiao_.”

Perhaps it was only Crowley’s imagination, but he thought he saw the ghost of a smile on Aaron’s face as he walked away, the napkin with Crowley’s number on it held in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1If Gabriel and Beelzebub had heard that, they might have exchanged slightly worried glances at this point in time, the sort of glances that also reassured the recipient that there was absolutely nothing to worry about and they were probably just being silly. As it was, they did _not_ hear any of this. Everything appeared to be running smoothly, and they had plenty of other, more important work they couldn’t put off any longer, so they’d decided to cut back on the time they spent watching their little experiment unfold. Besides, some of the higher-ups in their respective offices were beginning to grow suspicious of the time they spent holed up together watching the Earth Cam, not that either of them would ever admit that to the other.[return to text]
> 
> 2At _this_ point in time, Gabriel and Beelzebub’s glances would lose some of their reassuring qualities. Neither of them, when they’d created Stacie, had given her a contact at any nightclub, let alone a nightclub in the same neighborhood as Crowley’s. What they _had_ given her was an OkCupid account, and that was a mistake they’d also given to Shannon.[return to text]
> 
> 3Stacie liked to say his taste in music matched her great-grandmother’s. This was one of Beelzebub’s contributions to Aziraphale’s human life.[return to text]
> 
> 4It did not actually say anything about him as a person. He did not know the janitor’s name simply because Gabriel and Beelzebub had forgotten to give him one. [return to text]
> 
> 5This was because he had, once again, neglected to go to church that morning. [return to text]
> 
> 6Dave had taken it upon himself to start refilling Aaron’s glass with soda half an hour ago, and Aaron had yet to notice. It was unclear to everyone involved whether this was because the alcohol had affected his taste buds or if he was simply too absorbed in the conversation to pay attention.[return to text]


	6. Day Twenty-Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter chapter this time, hence the fast update.

If hangovers deserved their own circle of hell, as Crowley firmly believed, red wine hangovers deserved a very special place in that circle, right next to deceptively hard fruity concoctions and cheap liquor with Things at the bottom. 

He really should have seen this coming, he thought—or he would have, if all his cognitive functions weren’t currently cowering in a dusty corner of his brain somewhere in a vain attempt to escape the agony in his skull. It hadn’t even occurred to him last night to curb his alcohol intake because, if he’d been asked, he would have sat there contemplatively for a moment before proudly admitting he’d never had a hangover that lasted more than five minutes, and it wasn't for lack of trying.

This hangover lasted much longer than five minutes. Later, once his brain stopped screaming long enough to have a coherent thought, he wondered if that meant he was finally getting old. It wasn’t a sobering thought, only because he was already all too painfully sober.

* * *

Aaron took a cab instead of his usual train and wore sunglasses to the museum that morning. They were odd and round and reminded him of someone, but he couldn’t be bothered to remember who. He had the strangest sense he was annoyed with whoever it was at the moment. It might have been Stacie.

Stacie, after all her attempts at interrogation had been rebuffed last night and met only with pitiful groans and grumbles this morning, proceeded to text him all throughout the day. Aaron had been drafted at the last minute to lead a school tour that morning after the usual tour guide fell ill,[1] and the constant chiming of his phone proved an unwelcome addition to his speeches. Within half an hour, Aaron had lost his train of thought seven times, gone on three tangents about historic food preparation, avoided two brightly lit rooms on the itinerary, and been glared at on countless occasions by chaperones who had trouble keeping the students off their phones when the tour guide’s kept going off. He did not know how to turn off his notifications. He was name-dropped in two separate one-star reviews on Yelp.

Stacie took the hint when he got home and did not ask him about the napkin with the phone number again. Not that day, at least.

* * *

The phone number for A. Z. Fell and Co.’s bookstore was not listed in any phone book, but if one knew someone who knew someone who was friendly with the owner, one might be lucky enough to acquire it—or unlucky, depending on one’s intentions. Anathema Device had the number directly from the owner, because when people help prevent the end of the world together, however marginally, they exchange numbers. She and the rest of them had met up on occasion since then to piece together the different threads of what had happened that day and simply to keep in touch with interesting people. It was for this latter reason that she dialed up Aziraphale’s bookstore that Monday afternoon. 

That, and there was the matter of the engagement.

“We’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service,” said a mechanical voice designed to sound pleasant by people who had most likely never met a pleasant person in their lives. Anathema frowned and tried the number again.

“We’re sorry, you have—” She hung up. 

“That’s… odd,” she said. All her witchy senses told her this was an ominous sign. 

She scrolled down her contact list until she found Crowley’s name and hit call.[2]

“We’re sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or—” 

She glared at the phone and tried his home number. It rang, which was a good sign.

“Hello?” said a voice that was definitely not Crowley’s.

“Hello?” Anathema echoed, “Is this, um… This isn’t Anthony Crowley’s number, is it?”

“No, sorry. You must be thinking of the last owner,” said the voice, who Anathema realized was female and probably Welsh. She still had a hard time identifying accents on this damp little island. “We just moved in this month.”

“Oh.” Anathema frowned. “He didn’t happen to leave his new number or a forwarding address, did he?”

“Sorry, love.”

“Okay. Thank you.” She hung up, her bad feeling only growing. What were the odds, she wondered, that both Crowley and Aziraphale would become unreachable at the same time? They’d mentioned being in some sort of trouble with their higher-ups for the Notpocalypse, though Anathema hadn’t asked and they hadn’t said what sort, and both of them had voiced concerns that their current asylum on Earth wouldn’t last. Had Heaven and Hell made a move against them already? 

Was humanity next?

“Newt,” she shouted into the next room, “I’ve got to go in to London for something. Do you mind me taking Dick Turpin?”

A pause, then Newt appeared in the doorway. “Uh, sure. Do you want me to wait to order the invitations, or…?” They were doing the invitations through a company online.

“Probably best if I do that when I get back.” Anathema smiled, though the worry line between her eyes didn’t go away entirely. 

“Probably.” Newt’s grin faded when he saw Anathema’s expression. “Everything okay?”

There was no reason to worry him before she knew anything concrete. “It could be nothing, just…” She wiggled her fingers in the way that had come to mean ‘witchy business’ between them. “Better make sure, first.”

* * *

Two stalls from Dick Turpin and one annoyed phone call home later, Anathema stood in front of what used to be A. Z. Fell and Co’s bookstore and wanted to smash something. The gold lettering had been removed, leaving the paint below scratched and darker than its sunbleached surroundings. The windows revealed a dark, empty interior, devoid of the overflowing bookshelves that belonged there. Gone was the handwritten paper detailing Aziraphale’s overly convoluted hours, and in its place was a fiberglass sign proclaiming in bold letters: “Coming Soon!” underneath the logo of what looked like a laundromat.

She wanted to smash something very badly.

Instead, she spun on her heel and marched across the street to a little corner deli opposite the former bookstore. A bell jangled as she threw open the door. 

“What happened to A. Z. Fell’s?” she demanded of the balding old man behind the meat counter.

The man jumped, nearly scattering a container of colorful toothpicks across the floor. He seemed to realize Anathema wasn’t going to leave without answers, because he scrambled to right the toothpick container. “I have no idea,” he said, “He just left one day. Closed shop. I didn’t even notice he was gone until that laundromat sign showed up.”

“When was this?”

“About two weeks ago,” he said, “I can’t tell you when he left, though.”

Anathema took a deep breath. She may not know Aziraphale very well yet, but she could say with certainty that he would never sell his bookstore, not willingly at least. She’d seen him put up everything short of a physical fight to avoid selling a single book once. 

“Did you know him?” the old man asked, “Mr. Fell?”

“Sort of,” Anathema said, her mind racing, “We met about a year ago.”

“Then you know how he could get: always closing up for weeks on end with no warning.” The old man shook his head. “Can’t tell you how shocked I was when I saw that sign up. That shop had been there as long as I have, and I remember the old tailor next door said the same thing ‘fore he died. Very funny man, that Mr. Fell. You heard strange things about him, working across the street.”

“Uh-huh,” Anathema said, barely paying attention. 

“My niece—she’s the waitress here—she thinks he was some sort of immortal. Says the internet’s identified a bunch of ‘em, though I’m pretty sure she was joking about that.”

“Sounds about right.”

“Me, I just hope the Men In Black didn’t do him in.”

“Mmm—Sorry, what?” Anathema was fairly certain what she heard was correct, but she was also fairly certain what she heard was a movie. Then again, Newt did say he met a real alien during the Apocawasn’t.

“Men In Black, that’s what we call ‘em,” the old man repeated, waving his hand dismissively, “We’re pretty sure they’re the mafia. Every so often, these scary-looking blokes in black suits—not the scary-looking bloke with the vintage car; these are different people—they’d show up at his shop and offer to buy the place... or threaten to burn it down. We were never quite sure which. Prime real estate, that corner is, but Mr. Fell never budged, and those men never came back, not until a few years had passed. Fell was real cagey about the whole thing too. I asked him once, and he just said they’d been ‘dealt with.’ Honestly, I was too scared to ask what that meant.”

Anathema nodded. This certainly sounded like an Earthly problem, not a Heavenly one, but then again, she’d only ever properly met the one Heavenly agent, and the other one—Gabriel—had been awfully rude to Adam. She didn’t have to stretch her imagination too far to imagine him in a black suit trying to strongarm Aziraphale into following orders. 

“And when did he get the last visit from the, er, Men In Black?” she asked.

“About, oh, six months ago,” he said, “I only remember ‘cause my grandson had just been born.”

“Thank you.” Anathema dug in her pocket for and the little notebook and pen she always kept on hand and scribbled her name and number on a blank page. “If you think of anything else, let me know, okay?” She tore out the page and handed it to the deli owner. 

“Of course,” he said, “And if you do find out anything, you know where to find me. You’re not the only one worried about him, you know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1He was occasionally called on to do this because he knew a great many things about a great many periods in history, despite his specialty being in ancient Bibles. In every room of the museum there were usually at least one or two stories he could produce from memory, and he was more than happy to do so. Unfortunately, his stories tended to go on long, rambling tangents about the strangest details, and he was notoriously bad at managing children, so the museum tried to exhaust all other options before asking him to lead a tour. [return to text]
> 
> 2One might think it would be harder to get a demon’s number than an angel’s, and one might be right if one weren’t talking about Crowley and Aziraphale. All one had to do to get Crowley’s number was offer him a rewards program, especially if one worked at a frozen yogurt shop. [return to text]


	7. Day Twenty-Seven

Heaven, like Hell, had gone through many structural changes over the years. As a general rule, its form reflected that of contemporary Earth structures. Over the years, Heaven had been a garden, a mudbrick manor, a castle, a cathedral, and countless other things. These days it was a vast skyscraper. Hell was its basement.

In this metaphor, the pearly gates—once a massive set of real golden gates—became the lobby waiting area. As the midpoint between Heaven and Hell, everything about this place was designed to be neither overly agreeable nor overly disagreeable. The walls were a shade of beige both pleasing to the eyes and utterly boring. The seats were padded but just stiff enough to be uncomfortable after sitting on them for any amount of time. The magazines underneath the coffee table were all only mildly entertaining, but at least they were something for dead souls to do while they waited. Currently, fifty or so souls sat about the room, and it was somewhat cramped. It was always somewhat cramped, no matter the number of souls there. 

One of the two elevators on the right-hand wall dinged, and the doors opened to reveal a man-shaped being in a comfortable yet stylish turtleneck. Everyone’s eyes turned to him. Gabriel stepped out of the elevator and nodded at St. Peter behind his glass partition, and St. Peter paused in consulting his records to wave back. 

The other elevator—this one coming from downstairs—dinged, and out stepped a person-shaped being devoid of their usual pus and flies. Beelzebub glanced at Gabriel, and the two strode through a small door beside the elevators. This door was new. ‘New’ in a timeless realm meant it had been there for a year. They had added it shortly after the Apocalypse That Never Was to use as neutral ground where representatives of either side could meet without compromising their respective offices. Right now it was set up like a conference room with two massive glass screens covering one wall. 

Beelzebub flopped with a huff into their usual chair by the door. “Demons!” they said, “I get no respect these days.”

“Tell me about it,” Gabriel groaned, sitting down directly across the table from Beelzebub. “I still can’t see my desk for all the complaints on it.”

Beelzebub scrunched up their face. “You let people make complaints?”

“Of course. How else would we improve?” He paused. “You mean you don’t?”

A wicked grin spread across Beelzebub’s face, and Gabriel grew wary. “We _have_ a box for complaints,” they said, “but it dumps straight into the sulfur pits.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. He reached for the remote on the table.

“And then there’s the assassination attempts,” Beelzebub cried.

Gabriel’s hand froze around the remote. 

“If you’re going to try to kill someone,” they continued, oblivious to Gabriel’s shock, “at least make sure you’re halfway competent at it first.”

“You get _assassination attempts_?” Gabriel said, his eyes wide with disbelief. 

“Well… yeah. It’s Hell. We’re founded on the concept of violent revolution,” Beelzebub said slowly. Almost as an afterthought, they added, “It’s how I got the job.”

“So you had to... kill your predecessor?” Gabriel said. For some reason, the thought disturbed him a little. They were a demon; it stood to reason that they’d killed people. Gabriel knew this. He just hadn’t thought too closely on it.

Beelzebub shrugged. “I tried, at least. Thought I was done for when it failed, but he was so impressed with how close I came, he made me his lieutenant. Plus he didn’t want to risk me trying it again.” 

“Wait…” Gabriel did the math. “You’re telling me you nearly murdered _Lucifer_ ? And he _let you get away with it_?”

Beelzebub’s wicked grin returned with double the strength. 

“Good heavens,” Gabriel said weakly.

Beelzebub scoffed. “Trust me, your lot had nothing to with it.” 

When Gabriel showed no signs of recovering anytime soon, Beelzebub reached across the table and yanked the remote out of his hand. They hit the power button and waited for the screens to turn on. Nothing happened. They pushed the button again, and still nothing. Growing irritated, they jabbed repeatedly at the button with no result.

Earth Cam[1] was a Heavenly invention, and Gabriel had talked the other Archangels into letting him patch it into the conference room at the Pearly Gates for this project only, with the obvious stipulation that stringent security measures would be placed on it to ensure Hell couldn’t get their hands on a bootleg copy.[2] As such, the remote could not be operated by a demon, a fact Beelzebub had forgotten on multiple occasions

They handed the remote back to Gabriel and refused to look at him. A second later, the twin screens blinked on. 

It was very early on a Friday morning. Gabriel and Beelzebub hadn’t checked up on their experiment in a while, and they weren’t sure what to expect. On the left-hand screen was a man with white-blond hair that the Earth Cam tinted blue. He already had on his work clothes and was sitting at the kitchen table with what Gabriel was fairly certain were called pancakes[3] in front of him. From experience, he knew Aziraphale would spend the next few minutes being boring and making noises no self-respecting angel should make regardless of whether he was currently human or not, so he turned his attention to the other screen. 

There, Crowley was helping close the nightclub for the morning. Gabriel and Beelzebub exchanged frowns. Usually, Crowley wouldn’t stay until closing; he would show up shortly before they opened to get his managerial work done, schmooze with the more famous guests for a while after that, and go home before the drunks came out to party. He appreciated sleep too much to stay awake all night, yet here he was at five in the morning, still awake and at work. 

Gabriel turned the volume up on his screen. 

Crowley was striding purposefully across the main floor of the nightclub with a plant mister in hand, muttering about mutinous plants not responding to his intimidation tactics. He walked right up to the janitor, who looked up from the suspicious spot he was cleaning off the wall. 

“Can I help with something?” the janitor asked. 

“That’s the thing.” Crowley reached up as if to adjust nonexistent sunglasses and course corrected by running his hand through his hair. “Look, you’ve been here for… a while—”

“Oh, that reminds me,” the janitor exclaimed. He plunged his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, which flipped open to reveal a long string of well-thumbed photos in little plastic sleeves. “Have I shown you my little Joshua yet?”

“Uh…”

The janitor held up one of the newer-looking photos, this one of a shapeless newborn wearing an equally shapeless jumper. He smiled fondly at it. “Just a few weeks old, and he’s already got us all wrapped around his thumb, the little tyke.”

“Er, yeah…”

“Oh, and Amelia’s just got accepted into Shrewsbury! No idea where she got her smarts from, ‘cos it sure wasn’t me,” the janitor laughed, holding up a picture of a little girl with a gap in her front teeth, “We’ll be a bit strapped for cash, of course, especially with Joshua in the picture, but anything for our little girl, you know?”

“Yeah...  Of course…” Crowley turned right around and walked off.

Gabriel and Beelzebub exchanged looks. 

“What just happened?” Beelzebub said slowly.

“We didn’t give the janitor a family, did we? Seems a bit wasteful if we did,” Gabriel asked. 

On the screen, Crowley—now standing alone in the back office—muttered curses under his breath.

“We didn’t,” Beelzebub said. 

“Huh,” said Gabriel, “Human children don’t grow _that_ quickly.”

“They don’t.”

The head dancer poked her head into the office and opened her mouth to say something, but Crowley beat her to it. “How,” he cried, “am I supposed to fire a man who’s paying for private school for one kid and diapers for another?”

“Huh,” said Gabriel.

“That’s…” said Beelzebub.

“Did the janitor just…?”

“I think he did.”

“That took… a lot of planning.”

A glint appeared in Beelzebub’s eyes, and a slow grin spread across their face. “He’s a _genius_.” 

They continued watching the nightclub, switching between Crowley and the janitor, for another few minutes, but the most exciting thing to happen was Crowley kicking an empty plant pot and hopping around on one foot for a few seconds. The janitor continued working as if he hadn’t just conned his boss with fictitious children.

Gabriel turned his attention to Aziraphale-slash-Aaron, who was just finishing his breakfast. As he crossed into the flat’s living room, Stacie—currently playing a game Gabriel thought was called Tetris—piped up with, “Hey, whatever happened to that guy you met met last week?”

“Who?” Aaron said.

“Napkin guy,” she said, “You seemed pretty happy when you came home that night, but the next day you were so grumpy I wondered if something had gone wrong.”

Gabriel furrowed his brow.

“Oh, that,” Aaron said, turning faintly pink, “No, I was grumpy because you kept texting me at work.”

Stacie paused the game in the middle of stabbing something[4] and set down her controller. “So you _did_ hit it off!”

Aaron’s only response was to turn a darker shade of pink.

Gabriel and Beelzebub once again exchanged looks of confusion. 

“Soooo,” Stacie said, grinning widely, “What’s his name?”

“I’m not telling _you,_ ” Aaron said, “You’ll invade his privacy on the internet.”

“Fair,” Stacie said, “But you _have_ to tell me what he’s like.”

“He’s…” A smile twitched at the corner of Aaron’s mouth. “He’s ‘tall, dark, and handsome.’”

“You’re such a cliche,” Stacie laughed, “Have you called him yet?”

“Er…” Aaron adjusted his bow tie.[5]

“Tell me you’ve programmed the number into your phone at least.”

“Um…”

Stacie plucked a napkin with something scrawled on it off the coffee table and pulled out her own phone.

Aaron’s eyes flew open wide. With a strangled yelp, he lunged across the room. There was a brief scuffle as they fought over the phone, and it only ended when Stacie accidentally elbowed him in a very unfortunate place.

Gabriel winced. Beelzebub cackled. 

“If you don’t at least text him, I’ll do it for you,” Stacie said as she typed out the number, “Really, I’m doing you a favor. You desperately need to get out more.”

“No, I—Oh, fine! Give me that.” Aaron held out his hand for the napkin, and she handed it over with a triumphant grin. Glaring daggers at her, Aaron took his out his phone and began typing something. Gabriel maneuvered the ‘camera[6]’ so they were able to see what he wrote.

The text read: “Hello. This is Aaron; we met this past Sunday. How have you been?”

He showed it to Stacie. 

“You text like my mother,” she groaned.

Beelzebub snickered, and Gabriel shushed them by wagging his hand over the table. 

Aaron glared at Stacie. “Does it pass your inspection?”

“Fine,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, “but we seriously need to work on your texting grammar.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Aaron looked scandalized at the suggestion that he would use incorrect grammar.

Stacie gave him a flat look and simply shook her head sadly. “Just hit send, you sweet summer child.”

He did. Far away and one screen over, Crowley’s phone—sitting innocuously on the passenger seat of his Bentley as he drove home—dinged. Neither Crowley nor the two supernatural entities glued to Aaron’s screen heard it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1It had another, longer name which was meant to be shortened into an unpronounceable acronym, but everyone, including the Archangels, just called it the Earth Cam.[return to text]
> 
> 2Unbeknownst to Heaven, Crowley had his hand in creating bootleg copies of things, specifically in introducing bugs and viruses into otherwise perfectly clean files. Half the movies he owned were illegally downloaded bootlegs, and he could never figure out why his computer kept crashing on him. This was true of the human Crowley as well.[return to text]
> 
> 3They were eggs.[return to text]
> 
> 4The game was not Tetris. It was, in fact, Dragon Age: Inquisition.[return to text]
> 
> 5He couldn’t exactly tell Stacie the number was a decoy given to him out of pity.[return to text]
> 
> 6For the purposes of this experiment, Gabriel had told the Earth Cam to follow Crowley and Aziraphale, but it could be used to view virtually anything on Earth. Usually it floated several feet behind its subject, invisible and all-seeing. The Earth Cam had, since its invention, functioned quite like the camera in The Sims games. None of the angels knew these games existed, and if they were ever brought to Heaven’s attention there would be instant pandemonium as they scrambled to uncover the source of such a grave security breach. Not one of them would believe the truth: there was no supernatural influence, divine or otherwise, in the creation of The Sims whatsoever. Everything about the games came entirely from the minds of humans.[return to text]


End file.
